Hi Blog. It’s good to be back after nearly two weeks of being down after being hacked. Just a brief paragraph recap of what happened for those who are interested:

On November 29, I tried to log in but found that my password wouldn’t work. I got in touch with my provider but they were slow in answering, and after being bounced between a couple of helpful and unhelpful techies, I got signed up for a cleaning-out service. This took some time, as Debito.org after nearly two decades of service has accumulated around 16 GBs of data. But once that was cleaned out, I still had trouble logging in. So I had to manually update themes and change passwords here and there, only to find out that the only password that would now work to avail me of this dashboard was the old one (I’ve now gotten in and changed it officially via the blog dashboard). So here we are, back, as of this morning, ready to resume discussion.

Meanwhile, the question remains, who hacked Debito.org and why? Several techies wrote to me saying that WordPress is particularly vulnerable to hacks and spiders that implant viruses with delayed infection times. I don’t doubt that, but hours after Debito.org was taken offline, I got this weird message:

In response, we’ve signed up for a program offering constant security scans and cleaning, and although that increases maintenance costs, we’ve gotten donations (and lots of free advice, thanks for both!) from very kind people out there. Much obliged!

If you like what you see and want to keep Debito.org up and hack-free, please consider contributing a little something by Paypal:

11 comments on “BLOG BIZ: Debito.org hacked, down for nearly two weeks, now back up”

I guess some whacky guys sent a sinister message on the Black Friday because they were so pissed for missing the holiday shopping. So instead they chose to disrupt someone’s personal intellectual property that is not for sale?

I was about to submit my comment on the posting the next day, but it didn’t go through. I tried again, but no response. So I suspected there was something wrong with this website. I’m not sure it went through, but I’ll try again later if it didn’t.

and tell them suspect for hacking your website used their service to send a threatening email. They will be able (but maybe not willing) to give the IP-Adress of the person if you supply the email header data. It’s probable they will only cooperate when presented a court order. Whoever sent this mail doesn’t seem to be very professional. There’s no way to tell if the person who sent the mail has anything to do with hacking the site, but it wouldn’t hurt to grill him / her a bit.

If your server was in the EU I’d know exactly what to do but I’m not sure about how it works in the US.

I know YOU don’t want to speculate, but it doesn’t take much imagination to guess what sad nerds were responsible. The only thing sadder than housegaijin is the fact that they tend to be computer nerds as well.

Really bad. You are not a hypocrite, and you don’t have to go back to America since you changed your nationality.
I guess the haters think that the fact that you know Japanese is not enough but that you have to act a certain way.
The criticism is not justified.
This website is useful since it mentions things that apologists would just prefer to sweep under the rug.

Debito, Tor is software that’s being used to anonymize web traffic. https://www.torproject.org/
There is a debate about whether the US government is able to trace back traffic that is using proxy IPs, but to the harassment victim, the communication is basically coming out of a black box. This is why I say cowardly. I’ve had similar harassment over the past several years, probably from the same persons.

Well, it is interesting that the stalker site wound down its focus on Debito from a couple of months ago, popped back up to point out that debito.org had a problem on Google, went quiet again, then went into defense mode ‘it wasn’t us!’ when Debito took down the site for repair. Any software security engineers over there? Oh, yes…

From https://www.torproject.org/
“Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.”

Basically it means that you can hide your location and IP address very very well.